Youth Media Award Winners

This morning, the Youth Media Awards were announced - the best of the past year's media created for children and young adults. Here's the full list of books, media, authors, and illustrators who were honored this year, and the list again with only the young adult winners.

The Printz and Nonfiction awards are a couple of the biggies, and we have copies of the starred books in the library.

Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults

• Winner: Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick
• Honor: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
• *Honor: The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal
• *Honor: Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
• Honor: Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

YALSA Award for Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction

• Winner: The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World’s Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb
• Finalist: Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design by Chip Kidd 
• Finalist: Imprisoned: The Betrayal of Japanese Americans During World War II by Martin W. Sandler 
• *Finalist: Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles, America’s First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone
• Finalist: The President Has Been Shot! The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson

Rather read books voted on by actual young adults? The YALSA Teens' Top Ten list is voted on by teens all over the country every fall, and though Massachusetts doesn't have a local teen choice award, Rhode Island teens have nominated some great books for this year's Rhode Island Teen Book Award.

Google Smarter

The databases listed above in the Finding Articles tab are great resources, but there are times when searching the open web makes sense. For those times, here are a few ways to craft smarter, more focused searches on Google.

• Search Operators: Search operators are directions that tell Google specifically what to look for, so your search results will be more relevant. You can tailor your search by asking Google to do things like search a specific site or look for pages that mention any date in a range.
• Search Tools and Filters: Once you've searched using your keywords and search operators, search tools let you narrow down your results. There are search tools in the image search as well, so you can set the size, color, or image type to help limit your search.
• Advanced Search: The advanced search can really help narrow down your results. This search spells out how to use search operators and filter your results to get the most relevant hits.

If Google isn't your preferred search engine, don't worry - instead, check the help and support pages for your favorite search engine (Yahoo and Duck Duck Go both have support pages explaining their search operators). Many of the search operators will be the same and the advanced search will look similar. While using search operators and advanced search options will help focus your searches, in the end, determining whether the results Google returns are valuable is up to you - so make sure you do a CRAAP Test and think about the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of sources as they relate to your topic.

January Newsletter

The January newsletter is here - check it out!

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: Books!

Now on display: a collection of the books that inspired recent or upcoming movies. Check them out before you hit the movies this year!

The Breakfast Club

This isn't your typical book club. Read whatever you want, then come to the library and talk about it over breakfast before school on Tuesday, January 21. This is a chance to share recommendations, grab something new, and just talk about books.

If you can't make it or want to share your thoughts beyond breakfast, write a review for the Student Review Blog.

If you review a book we have here at the library, I'll put a link to your review
on the cover of the book, so tell us what you think!

February 13 Book Club Selection

Book Club's next meeting will be on Thursday, February 13, after school. We will be discussing Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch by Gregory Maguire. Stop by the library to pick up a copy.

From Goodreads: "In Baum's land of Oz, animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. Green-skinned Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West, is smart, prickly and misunderstood; she challenges our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil."

If you can't wait that long for a book club meeting, stop by the library before school on Tuesday, January 21 for a meeting of the Breakfast Club to discuss any of the books you've read lately over breakfast.

Book Club Read Alikes

If you liked Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, check out the current display for memoirs and fiction with similar themes as well as more information about teen suicide and depression.

Winter Reading Challenge

The Winter Reading Challenge is here!

From now until spring, take part in up to 10 reading challenges. In the past, the challenge has been to read as much as possible (which you're absolutely encouraged to continue doing!). This year, there will be a series of small challenges to read different kinds of materials, some of which might be outside of your reading comfort zone and make you think a little bit differently about what it means to be a reader.

For each reading challenge that you complete or book discussion that you attend, you earn a point. The challenge winner will be the person with the most points earned by the first week of spring.

The first reading challenge: read a poem. Not sure where to find one? Check out the display in the library, try the shelves at 811 and 821, or look at some of these links. To get your point for the week, either write down a quick review of the poem on one of the challenge slips available in the library and breakout areas and give it to Ms. Charpentier, or visit the library and verbally tell Ms. Charpentier about it.

Looking for another way to start earning points right away? Join in the discussion of Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen on Thursday, January 9, after school in the Library Media Center.